


Face in the Crowd

by Person



Category: Psychonauts
Genre: Boarding School, Future Fic, M/M, Mystery, Pretending It's Still 2010, Slow-building Relationship, Undercover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-01-05
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-14 11:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Person/pseuds/Person
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been a frustrating six years for Raz, recognized as a Psychonaut only by the staff of Camp Whispering Rock and only able to go on missions while camp is in session because of it.  That is, until his fellow agents catch wind of a suspicious school that's been seeking out and drawing in young psychics.  It's time for his first undercover mission, posing as just another student as he tries to figure out what secrets the school is hiding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Winter Blues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mock turtle (mturtle)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mturtle/gifts).



> This is secretly really a NYR 2010 story, but life was so messy last year that I wasn't able to get it done on time.

Late fall through to the last few weeks of winter was Raz's least favorite time of the year. It was like the entire world slowed to a crawl as the circus made its way south, performing fewer and fewer shows the closer it got to the end of the year, and then stopped dead all together when they reached the town they wintered in. Seeing the same place day after day instead of waking up in a new town every week didn't _need_ to be a bad thing--he would be perfectly happy to stay at Whispering Rock for months without ever leaving the campground, for instance--but that required it to be a place that wasn't _completely_ dismal. Something the town completely failed at.

It was a bleak gray place, just a little too far north to be at least warm _ish_ through most of the year, but also just a little too far south to at least get the type of snowy landscapes that got plastered all over holiday cards and could be used to build forts and have snowball fights when the weather was miserable. There wasn't anything interesting to do in it to make up for the lack of interesting scenery; it was the type of place that was called a town only by virtue of a half-mile stretch of shops and one fast food restaurant that were just barely clinging to life along the main road with a cluster of houses around them. It was the type of place where almost every citizen had to commute half-an-hour to the nearest real city to get to work. It was the type of place where their tiny circus's arrival was always the biggest event of the year, at least judging by the crowds they always drew without even giving a show.

It was also the type of place that was twenty miles from the nearest body of water that was higher than waist deep, which was the whole reason Raz's great-grandfather had chosen it as their home base. He'd strongly believed that spending more than a day or two around any lake, river, or community swimming pool bred complacency that would lead to their family not being appropriately wary around them.

Then he'd managed to drown himself in a bowl of soup after falling asleep in it face-first, but at ninety-five everyone had to agree that he'd been pretty damned good at avoiding the family curse.

The really sad thing was that even the people in the town freely admitted how much it sucked all winter long. Every year they'd have people telling them that they should really stop by in the summer some year, or stay later in the spring, or come earlier in the autumn so they could see how much nicer the area was when there were leaves on the trees, blue skies, and sunny days. They'd point out how their annual Fourth of July fireworks display won best in the county year after year, or how people came from miles around to visit the haunted house run out of one of the local farms in October. Raz didn't need to use his powers to realize that they were mostly bragging because they were embarrassed that the only interesting thing around in the winter was the circus itself.

He thought they really should just be glad that his dad let anyone in town who wanted to come watch for free as the circus practiced and came up with new routines.

Raz missed the way it had been when he was a little kid sometimes. Back then he'd actually _liked_ the months they'd spent in town. It had been nice to get to know kids who were his own age, and exciting when everyone got together to bang out new acts to enthrall crowds around the country once spring came.

That had changed when he became a Psychonaut. He was fine during the working year; there was always a ton to do while they were on the road, and he actually got a chance to hang out and have fun in the various towns they passed through ever since his dad had stopped forcing him to practice during every spare minute of the day. But when he was forced to stay in one place day after day, month after month, he wanted to use the time to _work_. He wanted to go on missions, save the world, have totally awesome adventures!

But Lili's stupid father had to go and keep it from happening. It didn't matter that Raz had saved the lives of everyone at Camp Whispering Rock back when he'd only been ten. It didn't matter that he'd almost single-handedly helped Coach Oleander work through his mental issues so he could be redeemed. It didn't matter that the greatest Psychomaster in history had been the one to induct Raz into the Psychonauts, or that his very first mission as part of the team had involved saving Mr. Zanotto himself. All that mattered to him was that Raz had been ten then, was sixteen now, and he wouldn't accept any underaged agents no matter _how_ good they were at kicking mental ass.

When he was at camp during the summer it didn't matter. He was one of Ford's secret agents, just like Sasha and Milla except even _more_ secret since they couldn't reveal the missions he'd been on after the fact. But that was _only_ when camp was in session, and at no other time; it would be too suspicious for him to still be hanging around when all the kids were supposed to be gone. It was even starting to get suspicious for him to be there _at all_ when every other camper was at least a few years younger than him. Dogan was the only one from Raz's first year at Whispering Rock who still came every year; even Lili's family had decided to find another way for her to spend her summers after she turned fourteen.

If anyone ever actually asked about why he was still coming, Oleander had a laundry list of reasons already prepared to give them. Raz needed more training than most kids because he had so much power. Raz had gotten such a late start that he needed a few extra years of training to make up for it. Raz knew the campgrounds backwards and forwards, would bend over backwards to assist the counselors when they needed an extra hand around, and was such a big help with the younger campers that they were glad to have him around as long as he wanted to keep coming.

Raz would be _so_ glad when he finally turned eighteen. Sasha and Milla had already promised to take him to pass the official Psychonauts recruitment test for his birthday so they could end the whole stupid act.

Milla was the person who was the greatest comfort to him when he got sick to death of having nobody outside of the camp and his family recognizing his contributions to the cause. She was the one who pointed out that all his years of extra training would put him _way_ ahead of everyone else his age, who stopped bothering with any real training after a couple of years at Whispering Rock taught them enough control to avoid any psychic accidents. Most adults who joined the Psychonauts were practically forced to specialize in whichever one or two powers had interested them enough as kids to keep practicing them on their own. By the time they were old enough to join up their minds had lost the flexibility of childhood; although they could learn new abilities, could even master them with enough time and effort, it took so long to gain any real skill that most people just worked with what they already had.

Not so for Raz. He'd never stopped training, never allowed any of the skills he'd learned to stagnate. His down-time during his summers at Camp Whispering Rock were spent learning every last thing he could wring out of the counselors, and he wouldn't _let_ himself get out of practice in any way during the seasons spent with his family. It would be too embarrassing to face Ford and the rest of the team if he couldn't hold a person's mind confused for as long or use clairvoyance to see through their eyes for as far as he could the year before just because those weren't skills that he needed to use often with the circus. They tried not to let him know just _how_ overloaded his skill-set was getting to be compared to other members of the Psychonauts--he'd been deep enough in Sasha and Milla's minds in the past to pick up that they were worried if he knew just how far he'd shot past other psychics his age it might go to his head, even if it had reached a point where it was as much a matter of his unique education as it was of his natural ability--but he had a collection of every issue of _True Psychic Tales_ since before he was born and it was easy to pick out who had mastered what if you specifically kept an eye out for what they used most often and with the most power behind it.

Knowing that _did_ help, just like Milla had expected. Every time he started to feel like he couldn't wait another day, every time he did something completely _awesome_ but didn't get any credit for it with anyone who wasn't already in on the secret, he could comfort himself by imagining the look on Zanotto's face when he saw how good Raz had gotten over the years and realized how useful he could have been on the field all that time.

But that still didn't keep him from desperately wanting to do something useful with his down-season. To do the job he'd been born to do.

Which was why, when his dream one night was suddenly interrupted by Cruller appearing and telling him, "Get up, Razputin! We need you to help--" Raz was awake and leaping out of bed before Ford even had a chance to finish his statement.


	2. Let's Get It Started

His dad had already been up and waiting for him by the time Raz got dressed, Coach Oleander having apparently talked to him on the phone while Ford was getting in touch with Raz. It was probably a good thing. Left to his own devices Raz would have tried practicing his teleportation to get to Whispering Rock instead of waking anyone up, and Ford had only had enough time that past summer to train him well enough so all his parts would stay together in the right order when he moved from one place to another; his ending location was still a crapshoot. He was sure he'd have gotten to the camp _eventually_ , and probably faster than the almost full day driving there took, but he didn't know whether they needed him at full psychic strength or not and that would have left him sapped.

Milla met them at the gates. "Razputin, darling! It is wonderful to see you again so soon!" She greeted him with a hug, then held him out at arm's length to look at him. "Have you had another growth spurt since summer? Try to make yourself look small, Darling, or you'll make Morry jealous!"

There weren't many things that felt better than having Milla smile at him like she was overjoyed to see him again after a long separation. The fact that he liked it for the mix of friendly and motherly that it was, not wanting anything else, probably made him the shame of every other sixteen-year-old guy in the world, but it was a little hard to be attracted to a person after you'd hung out inside of their flamey screaming nightmare cage. At least it was for Raz.

But her smile didn't seem quite as bright as it usually was. There was a tightness around her eyes that Raz could tell she was trying to hide, but they'd known each other _way_ too long for that to work on him. "Hey Milla, what's up?" he asked. "Something's wrong, right?"

Milla hesitated as she answered, "Not exactly _wrong_ , Darling, simply... unusual. It has me a little out of sorts, but there is nothing for you to worry about. I shouldn't tell you any more than that, Razputin; Ford will want to explain the mission to you on his own."

"You guys have really got a mission for me? In January?" he asked, and only waited for Milla's nod before he took off running for the nearest stump leading to the RTS. "Awesome! _Awesome!_ " he cried out as it took off for Ford's Sanctuary, rescuing him from the boring gray season for at least a little while.

"Agent Aquato reporting for duty, Sir!" he announced the moment he leaped out of the stump on the other end, as smartly as he could through all his excitement, then quickly amended it to "Uh, Sirs," when he saw that Coach Oleander was there too.

"You made good time, Soldier," Oleander said while waving him in, gruff as he always was when giving any sort of compliment.

"So, what's going on? Are we gonna fight a monster? A _big_ one? Or how about brain-eating leeches from outer space? Hopefully Chloe wouldn't think they're her relatives and call me up to yell afterwards..."

"What have we told you about reading all those comic books when you're away?" Oleander asked, frowning up at him. "Those things'll turn your brain to mush! You're here to do real work, Aquato, not that True Psychic Tales hogwash."

"Hey, my brain is _not_ mush!" Raz exclaimed, realizing that the first response that popped into his mind--to point out the big monster who lived right in their own lake--probably wouldn't be the best thing to snap back at the man responsible for her being there. "I bet you couldn't find a camper who keeps their mind in better shape than me if you tried."

"And it's a good thing too," Ford said, finally turning around from the screen he'd been examining to face Raz. "You're gonna need every bit of that mental muscle for the job we'll be sending you on."

Raz stood up a little straighter. "I'm ready for whatever you have to throw at me, Agent Cruller."

"I'm warning you, Razputin; this will be the most difficult mission you've been on yet, and I won't be with you this time. Remote projecting myself into your head at the distance you'll be for as long as you might be gone would be too much strain on the ol' noggin no matter how much psitanium I'm sitting on."

Raz's attempt at professionalism was crumbling more by the minute, to the point that he was practically bouncing on his heels; a mission that was long _and_ dangerous? It had to be something good. "Come on, when was the last time I had to ask you to pull me out of trouble? I'll be able to handle it!"

"You may need to stretch every skill we've taught you to the limit. If you've been letting your training slip, now's the time to let us know."

"Okay, now you're just dragging it out on purpose," Raz said, absolutely sure he was right about that. He could hear it in the tone of Ford's voice, a little of Janitor Cruller's over-dramatic nature slipping through the cracks in hie psitanium-stabilized mind. "I've never once let myself 'slip' and you know it."

Ford's face softened a little. "We're just trying to make sure you'll be safe, kiddo. We weren't expecting to send you on a mission like this for years yet. All we can do is hope that we've trained you well enough to prepare you for it. Razputin..." he paused for further dramatic effect, and Raz almost leaned towards him from the suspense, "...we're sending you to boarding school!"

All Raz could do was blink at him as that sank in. "Wait, _what?_ "


	3. Suspicious Minds

Ford had changed all the projections floating around his sanctuary to display information on the school; photos, blueprints, class lists, even if he didn't go on the mission he'd be walking away with his head stuffed full of more facts about the place than he'd ever need to know.

Coach Oleander paced back and forth in front of the images, his arms crossed behind his back. If he'd only had a riding crop in his hands it would have been bizarrely similar to the way he'd looked the first time Raz had ever seen him. "We have an old war buddy of mine to thank for this intel. He'd been chasing a goose that'd swallowed a hunk of psitanium and started breathing fire, or we might never have known about this place," he said, then gestured to a picture that was just an image of the front of the building. "Cottonwood Heights boarding school, established four years ago in an out-of-the-way corner of the Rockies. Passes out more full-ride scholarships per year than most schools do in a decade."

"So... they're suspicious because they have stupid business practices?" Raz asked, trying to figure out where they were going with this.

"No, they're _suspicious_ because they've got their dorms packed with enough psychics that they could be sensed from a mile away!"

Ford crooked a finger, and one of the lists of students suddenly enlarged to take up most of the viewing area, small photos of various girls and boys appearing beside some of the names. "Truman didn't find out much before deciding they weren't worth a full Psychonauts investigation. We're pretty sure that the scholarship students are the only ones with any ability, and they've got a few other things in common besides. It doesn't look like any of these kids have more than a lick of psychic powers themselves; when he had parents interviewed most of them never even suspected their children might be psychics, though they've all got memories of one or two _strange_ happenings rattling around in their skulls if they're asked to think about it. They're all old enough for their minds to have mostly stabilized, no inconvenient sudden jumps in power like the young kids sometimes get once they start exercising their brains that could draw attention to them. None of them have a known psychic in their family for at least four generations back. In short, not a one of them is someone the Psychonauts would ever have had their eyes on if Morry's friend hadn't happened to wind up near that school."

"Wait, so why isn't Mr. Zanotto still investigating this? That's all totally suspicious!"

"Bah, Zanotto!" Oleander snorted, and Raz had the feeling that he would have spit on the ground at the name if Ford wouldn't have lit him on fire for doing it inside of his sanctuary. "He decided it wasn't worth looking into any further. The way he sees it is, it doesn't matter how many brats who couldn't bend a spoon without using their thumbs you get together; fifty of them focusing on it wouldn't get that spoon any twistier than one could. So my buddy brought it to us, so some _real_ work could get done."

"You know as well as we do the blind spot Truman has when it comes to dealing with young psychics, Razputin," Ford said, his tone carefully neutral in a way that told Raz that now wasn't the time to get pissed off about that. "And he might even be right about the school being no threat; we've had Sasha in there since the school year began and he hasn't seen a hint of covert psychic training or any signs that the teachers even know there's anything out of the ordinary about those children. There's no chance this is a coincidence, but it could just be that the woman in charge of the school is a weak psychic herself, or is close to someone who is, and wants to do something to help kids like them."

"But you don't think that's true, do you?" Raz asked, starting to grin as he realized what they were working up to. "If you did, I'd still be back in Snoresville helping my baby cousin learn how to juggle."

"Let's just say I wouldn't put any money on it." Ford looked down at him with the serious expression he always used when he was about to make a very important proclamation to Raz. Or whenever he was going to make a stupid joke dressed up in the facade of importance. "We hadn't intended to send you on any undercover missions for years yet, and not without plenty of training in the art of subterfuge, but there's no choice this time. We need _someone_ who can get closer to the students than a teacher can get without raising eyebrows right and left, and you're the best young psychic we have. Luckily on a mission like this almost all of your cover story can be the unvarnished truth, so you should be able to keep it up even with no training. As far as the school's concerned you're just an ordinary circus boy whose parents decided that now that you're getting older you should go off to school and better your mind. It's not the most usual arrangement, but your father made a strong case, greased a few palms, and passed on enough of your homeschooling records to prove you're not just some tent-raised hick."

"'Greased some palms'?" Raz repeated. "I think you're _way_ overestimating how much cash the circus brings in, Ford."

"And if we actually expected your old man to be the one ponying up the cash, that _might_ be a problem," Oleander cut in. "You're a Psychonaut, soldier; don't you forget about the resources we've got at our disposal just because Zanotto won't let you get at 'em yet."

"And I'll be working with Sasha? While Milla's left back here? Geeze, no wonder she seemed worried. I can't believe you're breaking up the Psychonaut super-team."

"We try to avoid sending Milla on assignments where kids might come to harm," Ford said, letting Raz work out the reasons for _that_ rule on his own. It didn't take more than a moment for the mental light bulb to click on. "Now, we _could_ have sent Morry in, let Sasha and Milla take care of any other problems that show up together the way they usually do, but we knew from the start that if our first agent in couldn't get to the bottom of what's going on at that school we might need to call on you, Raz, and since in-mind communication will be the safest way of sharing information out there that'd come with a whole other set of problems."

'Problems' was the light way of putting it. Their past mental meld made it _way_ too dangerous for Raz or Coach Oleander to ever enter the other's mind again; no matter how completely two brains have been separated, if they've been fused together once they'll always remember the mental imprint of the other and be able to follow those impressions to slide neatly back together if they touched each other again. It wasn't sure to happen every time, it might not even ever happen again, but why take a risk that was so easy to avoid?

Raz hadn't even been allowed to take Basic Braining again after his first year, running obstacle courses thrown together by one of the other counselors instead just to show he'd done something to reearn the badge every year. As the number of camper's who'd been at Whispering Rock during his first summer and knew why he was given apparent special treatment went down year by year, the number who got jealous of him for escaping the Coach's 'death trap' got larger, but there wasn't much he could do about that. Never ending up in that freaky circus of meat again was worth having to spend a few days being extra nice to all the new kids in order to win them over.

And if he ever _did_ get curious about how it might have changed now that he was older and Coach Oleander was sane, there was _no way_ he'd decide that the right time to sate that curiosity was during a secret mission off in the middle of nowhere.

"What do you say, Razputin?" Ford said, seeming to sense--or, more likely, outright spying on his thoughts to know--when Raz was through going over those memories and holding out a hand to him. "Are you in?"

"You even need to ask?" Raz asked, grabbing Ford's hand in a firm shake. "I won't let you down!"

"Then report to Milla in the cabin area, double time! She'll be the one outfitting you." Oleander barked, getting the order out before Ford had a chance. Raz might have been insulted and how sharply he'd been dismissed if he hadn't known Coach Oleander for so many years. Instead he gave Oleander a brisk salute that he knew would please him, kept his ears perked as he turned his back to them and started to walk away, and beamed from ear to ear when, just as he was jumping down into the stump, he caught the Coach whispering proudly to Ford, "His first deep undercover mission at sixteen. I knew that kid was something the first time I saw him, and he just keeps proving me right."


	4. Prep Time

Milla was sitting with his father at one of the picnic tables in the cabin area, a stack of garment bags piled up on the table top beside them. Though he could tell that they'd been talking to each other while they waited, the minute he bounced back above ground Milla was on her feet and heading in his direction. "Okay, Razputin! If Ford and Morry are through explaining the situation we can begin to get you supplied!"

Raz grinned, then laughed out loud, a little giddy with the knowledge that this was _really happening_. "You aren't even gonna ask to make sure I said yes first?"

"Oh, Darling, how long have we known you now? Of course we all knew that you would agree right from the start, and it would have been difficult for any doubts to last when you ran off yelling 'awesome'."

"I guess I kinda did give it away," he said with a shrug, his grin only growing. But he hesitated then, and turned towards his dad. Six years before he would have just jumped into the mission without even caring whether his parents approved, or even knew, or not. If it had even crossed his mind he would have just figured that his dad had just been talking to Milla, _Milla_ ; there's no way she would have sat there chatting with him and _not_ checked to make sure he was fine with their plans. But Raz guessed that he must have grown up since then, because he could understand now how it might make a difference to his father, how it might mean something to him, if he asked for himself instead of just taking his permission for granted. "It's okay if I go, right dad? I know that if it takes too long I'll end up way behind on any new routines..."

Augustus raised his hand and shook his head, waving Raz's worries away. "It's fine, son, we'll work something out when you come home. We all understand that when you're with us you're just killing time until you can get back to your real work, no one will try to keep you from it." He dropped his hand on top of Raz's head, and Raz was sure that he would have been ruffling his hair if his hat hadn't been in the way. "It will probably do you some good to study at a school that doesn't come out of a box. Your cousin Barry does his best, but I'm sure you'll be better off with real teachers who aren't just reading the answers out of a book."

"Whoever has been teaching him has been doing well enough, even if they are untrained," Milla cut in gracefully. "We did not need to fudge your academic records at all for you to be accepted at the school, Darling. Which will be a good thing once you're there; all of your classes should be at the proper level for you. Here, you can see for yourself while I start to get your uniform ready!"

She produced a schedule slip from a purse that she'd left on the picnic table where she'd been sitting with Augustus and passed it to Raz, then she began unzipping garment bags and pulling out jackets that all looked identical to each other to his eye.

The schedule looked normal as far as Raz knew, although the closest thing to a school schedule that he'd ever had in the past was ' _These_ are what you need to have done by the next time we mail your work back to the grading people, do it in whatever order interests you and grab your cousin if you need help.' The classes were more specified than the few comics he had which dealt with school would have lead him to believe--Algebra instead of just math, 20th Century History instead of all of time mushed into one class, and for science he had Biology which made him excited at the thought that maybe he'd get to _dissect_ something which was one type of lesson that didn't travel well by mail--but other than that it was all pretty boring. Weren't boarding schools supposed to have fancier classes, for parents who thought that just plain private schools weren't _special_ enough for their little darlings?

At least, that's what he was thinking until he caught sight of the very last class on his list. "Hey! Hey, wait! Milla, I don't know _what_ my grades made you think was the 'proper level' for me, but AP German isn't it! I'm not even ready for normal German, or rudimentary German! I know, like, five words I've picked up from Sasha; that'd be like saying I'm ready for advanced Brazilian classes because I learned how to say 'tudo bem' from you!"

"Portuguese, Darling, a Brazilian is a person or a nut, not a language," she corrected absently, floating two jackets in the air in front of him then tossing one aside even though he couldn't see any differences between them. "There's nothing for you to worry about, Razputin; whose class do you think that is? We could have signed you up for the beginner's level class, of course, but we thought that this way would be better. It will be very easy for you and Sasha to come up with excuses to spend time around each other once the class period is over if you're having difficulties keeping up with your lessons."

"Oh. Great. So instead of looking stupid in front of some random teacher I don't care about, I'll look like an idiot in front of Sasha instead," he grouched. "Hey, you said you didn't change my records at all! You were lying! There has to be some kind of test or something you need to take to get into AP classes, right?"

"Well... we might have done a _little_ fudging. But only for this one class, for the sake of the mission. And you listen to me, young man; Sasha will _never_ think that you're stupid so don't even worry about that. We both know how difficult it can be to learn a new language." She flashed him one more comforting smile, then passed him a few of the jackets that she'd been sorting through. "Now, try these."

He shrugged off his coat and pulled on the first jacket. "Uh... Milla? Exactly how is _this_ one any different than, say, that one?" he asked, and gestured to one of the seemingly randomly discarded jackets.

"Oh, that one would never have worked, darling. Much too broad in the shoulders, you see?" she plucked it up and held it stretched out in front of him, and he thought that _maybe_ he could tell what she was talking about, but it was hard to tell when it was dangling limply from her fingertips instead of wrapped around his body. "We know that you haven't stopped growing yet, so we bought everything in several different sizes so you'd be sure to have a uniform that fits no matter how much you'd grown since summer." She tugged the jacket he was trying on straight then rubbed the fabric of the sweater he was wearing under it with a frown. "Oh no, this won't work! You'll need to try on the uniform shirts at the same time, Razputin, these jackets weren't designed to fit properly over fabric this thick. And if you're doing those at once you might as well take the slacks too. I'm sorry, darling, but you can pick any cabin you'd like to change in."

It wasn't like there was any real choice. Sure, he _could_ go into the girls' cabin and imagine how jealous Nils' would get if he ever learned that Raz had stripped down surrounded by the left-over psychic residue of all the ladies, though most of the 'ladies' were, like, ten so that would be kind of creepy. Or he could go into the one which always ended up with a mish-mash of whoever got left out when all the beds in the other two cabins were filled because its position was a little more protected from the wind than the others. But he wouldn't. He'd always had the same bed in the same cabin and even with the same bunkmate, though every year it became less likely that Dogan would be back again the next. It didn't matter that he could pick one of the others, he just wouldn't be as comfortable anywhere else.

And considering how uncomfortable he found himself when he got into his cabin and started taking off his shirt, he really wouldn't have wanted it to get any _worse_. It was a summer camp after all, and the cabins weren't designed for being cozy in the winter. Not only was there no heat there wasn't even any glass in the windows, which was perfectly fine in the middle of July when the blankets on the bunks were enough to fight off even the worst cold snap at night but decidedly unpleasant in January.

"Hey, Milla!" he called out as he picked up the first of the crisp white shirts she'd left for him to try.

She must have been right outside, maybe even leaning against the wall of the cabin, because her voice was surprisingly close when she replied, "Do you need something, Razputin?"

"Um, not _exactly._ It's just really cold in here, so don't worry if you spot fire, okay?"

Her voice was soft and warm when she responded again, "Of course, darling, I should have thought of that myself. Thank you for warning me."

"No problem!" He'd gotten better at controlling his pyrokinesis over the years, a good thing since he didn't want to have to set the cabin on fire to light one, _especially_ not with Milla right outside. It wasn't like he'd be in any danger if he did burn the cabin down--he and his dad wouldn't even have a chance to react before Milla had him yanked out of the cabin and probably floated halfway across camp before she let him down again--but what kind of jerk would he be if he upset his friend with fire issues two seconds after telling her she had nothing to worry about?

Instead of making the flames just burst into being he imagined a bowl hanging in midair, one which was wide and deep. He made his fire appear within that imaginary container, not allowing it to move beyond those invisible boundaries. The room almost immediately became easier to handle, though he wasn't sure if it was actually getting warmer that fast or if having the fire there just caused a placebo effect. Either way was fine with him, just as long as it meant that he was no longer at risk of turning into a Raz-sicle when he striped down.

He was tugging at the waistline of the first pair of slacks when he left the cabin to show Milla the first combination of clothes that he'd tried on. "These pants are a little too tight."

"Yes they are," she told him, looking him over with an appraising eye then giving a quick nod, "and the sleeves of the jacket are too long as well. Before he had a chance to get bothered by what she was doing she had stepped around him and quickly turned down his waistband and collar to see the tags hidden behind them. With that information in hand she walked to where he'd left all the other clothes piled on the floor, clicking her tongue in quiet disapproval, and quickly sorted two different pairs of slacks and three jackets from the bunch. "I'm almost sure now that these will be just perfect, Razputin," she said, handing one of each to him, "and the others will work well enough. The shirts beneath don't matter so much; as long as they don't hang off you you'll be just fine. Just see if I'm right, young man, and we'll have enough to hold you until we can send an entire wardrobe!"

Sure enough the set she'd deemed 'perfect' fit him like a glove, and the others were close enough that she declared no one would give him trouble about them unless someone in the school staff was absolutely draconian about making insisting all uniforms fit perfectly. While he had his first couple of days of classes she'd be buying a closet full of uniforms in the right size for him then send them on to the school, and until they got there he'd claim if anyone asked that there'd been a mixup with his trunks in transit and that he was just glad he'd had the sense to take a spare uniform on the train with him in case he spilled something on the one he'd traveled in.

Once the uniform was sorted out she said, "Now _this_ is the most important thing of all, darling," and handed him a belt. "You must _never_ take it off while on this mission, even when you sleep you must keep it under your pillow."

"...A belt?" Raz said, blinking at it.

"No, Razputin, the belt buckle. You can keep it in your pocket if you would rather not wear the belt itself."

"We've got a necklace that'll work too, if that'll make you feel prettier," Cruller's voice drifted through Raz's mind, letting him know that he was keeping an eye on how things were proceeding. Sometimes Raz wondered if Ford would _ever_ get over him liking to change the colors of his powers from time to time.

"But what's it _do_?" he asked.

"It will be your disguise, Razputin," Milla said. "We are sure that no one but Sasha will recognize your face, but we know that they must have some way of telling what people are psychic to be recruiting those children. They may get suspicious if a student with such strong powers just tumbles into their laps, especially since they are seeking potential instead of active talent; there would be no way for rumors to reach a talented boy about a school where he can be surrounded by friends with the same talent. Even if they are not at all suspicious, they would definitely worry that you might pick up thoughts about their plans, whatever those plans might be! But the device within this belt buckle will prevent anyone from sensing your ability, even when you are using it."

"Is Sasha gonna be wearing one of these things too?" he asked, strapping the belt on.

"Sasha doesn't need one. Next summer we will start teaching you how to hide your power too, darling, but we never thought you'd be going undercover so soon!"

"Okay, got it!" Raz slipped the belt on and bounced on his heels, "It that all now? Can we get moving? I'm ready to go out in the field, Agent Vodello!"

" _Not_ so fast, Kiddo," the Cruller in his mind brought him up short. "You haven't even gotten your school books yet. Now settle yourself down, you've got a ways to go yet."


	5. New Beginnings

Raz was bored completely senseless by the time he reached the town the school was in. He thought that once they were _finally_ done with all the preparations they had to get through before he could finally leave for the mission Ford would just teleport him to where he needed to be, but no such luck. Deep undercover meant _not_ just popping out of nowhere.

So they'd picked a train for him to travel by instead, as a display of who they were trying to make him, or more accurately his family, out to be; willing to spend enough to make a better first impression than showing up in a bus or getting driven there, but too poor to waste money on plane tickets. He did get a sleeper compartment of his own, which might have been exciting if he'd been on his way to nowhere special but which seemed excruciatingly slow when his destination was such a huge deal. The trip took through what was left of the night after he finally got going, sleeping in his boxers since he hadn't been given any pajamas, and then through the morning and into the afternoon on top of that. It really seemed like they could have at least teleported him somewhere that was just a couple of hours away without messing anything up.

He poured over his German textbook to pass the time, hoping that maybe he could get enough of a start on it to _not_ look like a complete idiot no matter what Milla said about not worrying about that, but it wasn't much help. It obviously hadn't been written for a complete beginner like him, the few words that he knew not offering him any help at all. But even if AP German textbooks came with a special newbie guide for secret agents taking the class on false qualifications he realized that it wouldn't actually be much help. Not when everyone else in class would already be a full semester ahead of that beginner's section.

He kept reading anyway, not comprehending much but making sure to get every word. If Sasha ever asked anything directly from the reading Raz _would_ be able to answer, at least as long as it was on a written test; he wasn't quite cocky enough to assume that recognizing an unfamiliar word when it was written down would let him know how it was pronounced. His memory had never once failed him, accurate to the point that he knew Sasha suspected it was a heretofore unknown type of psychic specialization. It had certainly helped him pick up abilities quickly when memorization skills didn't usually have much to do with it, and most young psychics would always lean heavily towards some specific form of the power before they first started training across fields but Raz had always seemed to be a Jack of all psychic trades, hopefully eventual master of most.

Raz didn't really care whether that was true or not. If it was, awesome! One more power! And if it wasn't, no big deal, who really cared if a good memory was _just_ a good memory or his mind psychically absorbing and storing whatever information passed through it? All that mattered was that it had made his life easier before and it would again, starting with German.

That kept him occupied, but 'occupied' was not the same as 'entertained' and by the time the train finally pulled into the station he was more out of his mind with boredom than ever. A conductor who'd been checking on him regularly through the trip, worry over why someone so young would be traveling alone crackling off her mind with enough force that Raz could sense it without even trying to use his powers though she never actually tried finding out, was there ready to help him get his things together at just about the moment the train came to a stop, but he slipped away from her quickly.

This was the _real_ start of his mission. The minute he stepped off the train it would become the person everyone the town the school was in would see him as for however long he was there. It didn't matter that his cover was just his normal self minus his powers, he was gonna be the best, most convincing, powerless Raz he could be! And the best Raz he could be wouldn't have someone hovering around babying him the first time anyone in town saw him.

Before he'd left camp they'd let him know that Sasha was trying to wrangle things so he'd be the person who picked Raz up at the train station--part of the reason he'd left Whispering Rock so late was so he'd be on a train that got in a while after his last class of the day--but he didn't know if he'd worked it out or not. Part of Raz actually hoped that he hadn't. After all, how cool would it be if he managed to pry some useful information out of some random teacher before even getting to the place? Sasha would be so impressed when they finally met up!

But that part of his mind was tiny and any disappointment he might have felt about being denied that chance was completely drowned out by his happiness when he spotted Sasha hanging around beside the depot. "Hey! Saaaa..." he started as he ran towards him, grinning, only to catch himself almost as soon as the name started coming out of his mouth. Perfectly ordinary student Raz shouldn't look so happy to see a teacher who he'd never met before. And he really shouldn't be calling him by his first name. _Especially_ when he was going by a fake name instead of 'Sasha'. Hoping that he'd caught himself quickly enough that nobody else would notice his slip he twisted the sound in his mouth into "...iiiiir? I'm Razputin Aquato. Are you the one the school sent to pick me up?"

Yeah, Raz thought, he'd played that totally cool. And judging by the way the corners of his mouth flexed the tiniest bit, a movement too slight for anyone who didn't know him as well as Raz did to notice the faint sign of approval, Sasha agreed that he'd done well.

"Yes," he said, the tone of his voice more cold than usual in a way that made Raz flinch a tiny bit even though he knew it was just an act. Apparently Sasha was _not_ playing the cool, friendly teacher. No wonder he needed Raz to get in good with the students for him; if there really was anyone sinister on the staff they wouldn't expect the Psychonauts to force someone who apparently disliked teens to work with them for months, but no students would come to him for help if someone was eviling at them. "Do you need to collect any luggage? If not, come."

They walked out to the parking lot in icy silence, Raz trying to look cowed or at least to hide how impressed he was. He'd never realized what a good actor Sasha was, even though he knew that he and Milla went undercover often enough that he should be able to sell a role. If wasn't like he was saying anything that would sound out of place coming from his mouth normally but the whole vibe of them was different, like instead of keeping his words to the point because he wasn't great with small talk he did it because he didn't _care_ what Raz thought, or felt, or had to say and wasn't going to use a single excess word lest it encourage him to try chatting.

As they stepped out into the sunlight it became obvious that his personality wasn't the only thing that had changed. Raz was surprised at just how subtle his disguise was; to someone who knew Sasha it hardly even seemed to count as one. It was nothing more than a faint mental impression designed to change the way anyone looking at him saw his coloring--a blue tint added to his skin, his hair lightened slightly to eggplant purple instead of flat black--and his usual shades switched out for a normal pair of glasses.

But after a second's thought Raz realized that in spite of being such a simple change that should actually be surprising effective. Sasha was so reclusive that photos of him were almost _impossible_ to find, Raz knew that for a fact from his younger fanboying days back before the real Sasha was always at most a phone call away for him to bug at will. For the most part only other Psychonauts and kids who'd gone to Whispering Rock really knew what he looked like. Everyone else only had the art from the comics and merchandise to go by, and they never got his facial shape right and colored him such a bright lime green that even the real shade of his skin would look like a huge coloring error if it ever showed up in one. And even if somebody was able to put it together, Raz _thought_ that he felt a slight suggestion saying that Sasha wasn't someone he'd seen before coming to the school beneath that, though it was hard for him to be sure when it hadn't been made strong enough to effect someone who already knew him.

Sure, he _could_ have created more of a disguise for himself. If he'd wanted to he could have made people see something as different as a dancing octopus when they looked at him, though Raz guessed that'd look kind of weird standing at the front of a German classroom. But changing himself radically would take a much stronger, much more obvious, psychic impression. What he'd done instead used so little power that it was hard for Raz to sense it even standing in the bus station and knowing exactly what he was feeling for. At the school it should be completely invisible against the low level psychic activity that was apparently all over the place.

It was a little weird for him to see, but he'd get used to it easily enough. It was the glasses, perfectly ordinary without a trace of psychic energy clinging to them, that actually got to him. _Raz_ had seen Sasha's eyes before, often enough that it had stopped being the big deal it had felt like the first few time, but just because it was kind of normal for _him_ to see them it didn't mean that other people should be able to all the time! It was one of the perks that came with being a Psychonaut: excitement, adventure, and finding out if the rumors that Sasha Nein always wore shades because someone had psi-blasted one of his eyes out were true or not!

It wasn't like he was jealous of a bunch of random students and teachers or anything, but what had _they_ done to deserve to know what his eyes, if they existed, looked like? It was just kind of annoying, that was all.

While he was processing all that, Sasha lead him to a car parked in the lot, catching Raz by surprise. He'd figured that they were just cutting across the parking lot on their way towards the school, he didn't know Sasha would actually be driving. He didn't even know Sasha _could_ drive. He didn't own a car in his normal life, and Raz had never seen him borrow Milla's or Oleander's. He was usually the pilot of the jet, but that was hardly the same thing.

As soon as they were in the car and on the road, safely away from any spying eyes or listening ears, Sasha let the act drop, giving him a faint smile. "I'm glad that you were able to join me, Razputin."

"I'm glad that you saved me from dying of boredom! Man, even going to classes is gonna be more interesting than things back home." He craned his head around as he spoke, trying not to miss anything about the area they were driving through so he could try to get the feel of the town he'd been living in for he didn't know how long.

As if reading his mind, though Raz was pretty sure that wasn't what he'd actually done since they were supposed to avoid using their powers, Sasha asked, "Is there anything you'd like to stop for? The school will not allow you many trips into town, and I know that Ford didn't give you much time to prepare."

"Well, there is _one_ thing..." Raz pulled the tie Milla had given him to complete his uniform out of his pocket and glared at it, the stupid useless thing. "Can I get rid of this and get a clip-on?"

"Certainly not, Razputin. Such a tacky look. No." He turned away from the road, taking control of the car with a telekinetic hand, and took the tie from Raz. "If you need help I will teach you how to tie it correctly."

"Okay, okay," Raz said, knowing better then to argue with Sasha on anything he deemed 'tacky'. He tilted his head back and added, "Geeze, Sasha, it's not like I was gonna try to make you buy one in day-glo orange or anything."

"Of course you wouldn't. You know that I wouldn't buy such a thing." He wrapped the tie around Raz's neck, and as he adjusted the length of the ends Raz could feel the information about exactly what Sasha was doing enter his mind.

Raz raised and eyebrow and gave Sasha a lopsided smile, trying to hide his bemusement. " _Sasha_ , aren't you guys the ones always saying what a bad idea it'd be to just give me the memories of how to do stuff."

"For learning new psychic abilities, yes. You should never learn skills your life may someday depend on secondhand, Razputin, they will never come to you as easily as those you've learned through your own efforts," he said, in the absent tones of someone repeating a lecture they'd given a thousand times before. He finished the last loop of the tie, tugging it snug, and added, "However, as it's doubtful that whether or not you can tie a tie will ever be a matter of life and death, we can overlook that just this once."

Raz laughed as he carefully shifted through the new instructions in his head, making sure they were all clear to him, and grinned widely. "See? This is why you're my favorite person to learn stuff from. You know when rules are better off being broken!"


	6. Getting to Know You

"Now, what else do we need to do for you?" the woman in front of him, Principle Morten, said as she shifted through the papers on her desk.

For the last twenty-minutes Raz had been sitting in front of her desk as she introduced him to the school, giving him a map and making sure he could find all his classes and the cafeteria on it and going over the rules for students. 'Usually this would be a job for your guidance counselor, but we don't get many transfer students so I wanted to get a look at you!' she'd admitted cheerfully when he arrived, and that good-nature never slipped through their entire time talking.

But Raz didn't let himself forget why he was there just because she seemed nice. He smiled and nodded as she talked the way he knew he was supposed to, but he was watching her suspiciously from behind his happy new student cover, wondering if her friendly princi-Pal act was an equally fake cover for something more sinister. Was she plotting to hook all the psychic students in the school up to some type of psychic magnifying death-beam thingy even as she talked to him? Or was she just a normal woman who had no idea that there was anything strange was going on at the school she'd been hired to run, and he was being overly suspicious because the chipper way she talked reminded him uncomfortably of the Rainbow Squirt Den Mother?

The only thing he could say for sure was that she definitely wasn't psychic herself, unless she was doing something to hide her powers the way he and Sasha were.

"Oh yes!" she chirped as something in his file brought something new to her mind. "I meant to ask, in your circus did you have any acrobatic experience?"

"Well, I don't like to toot my own horn..." he said, buffing his nails on his jacket, "...but it's kind of my specialty."

"Wonderful! Well, Razputin, we may not have a 'big top' like you're used to, but if you'd like to keep in practice while you're here we _do_ have a championship gymnastics team! And they've been looking for a new member ever since one of our young stars quit the team after she broke her leg during winter break."

"Uh, I'll keep that in mind," Raz said, already planning to ignore the idea completely. He needed all the free time he had to sneak around investigating, especially since he didn't have the first clue where he should start. He couldn't waste any on sports! Anyway, he could practice his acrobatics anywhere; if he could find a tree with solid enough branches to swing from he was good to go. "I think I should focus on getting settled in for a little while first though, don't you think?"

"But joining the team could only help with that! There's no faster way to make new friends than by joining an extracurricular activity. Why don't I just arrange a time for you to try out? It will give you a chance to meet the team and get an idea of what they do before you make up your mind about them."

Raz was starting to get the feeling that be 'one of our stars' she had meant 'the girl all our hopes of winning the championship again were pinned on'. "Okay, that sounds fine," he told her, just so she'd stop wasting time trying to pressure him into it.

"Then I'll talk to Coach Bailey tonight, and someone will get in touch with you in a day or two with the time of your audition. I know that you'll have a good time!" she made a note to herself, then gathered all his papers together back into their file. "Okay! I think the only thing left is your room. Now, _usually_ we group all the students together by year in the dorms, but if we did that the only free beds for you would be in empty rooms, and I told myself we just couldn't have that! A new student transferring in mid-year, and one who has never attended school before at that? You need a roommate to help show you the ropes, so you'll be in with one of the senior boys instead. Gary Adams, he's already agreed to help you as you need it."

"You know, I'd be _totally_ cool sharing with an empty bed," Raz said quickly. He hadn't even thought of the fact that he'd probably have to share a room with someone until she'd mentioned it, but as soon as she had he'd realized that his job would be a lot easier if he could somehow get out of it. He didn't want to need to make up excuses every time he vanished at odd hours or brought back weird evidence (assuming he ever found any). "You don't need to force this guy to have a roommate."

"Nonsense. You don't need to worry, he's a very nice young man, he won't bear a grudge against you just because he's no longer lucky enough to have a single." That possibility hadn't occurred to Raz until then. Another reason to worry about the roommate idea, great. "I'll have my secretary show you to your room now. It's been very nice to meet you, Razputin, and I hope that you're look forward to having a wonderful time in our school!"

The secretary she called in was as dour as Principle Morten was bright. As they walked out to the dorms Raz occasionally tried making small talk with him, but his questions received taciturn answers and his chit-chat was ignored all together so before long he just gave up.

The room he was taken to was on the fourth floor of the dorms. Though the secretary didn't volunteer any information about the building, a glance at the labels beside the elevator buttons told Raz that there was a level dedicated to each grade, from Freshmen on the ground floor to Seniors on the top. He decided at once that after that trip he was going to take the stairs whenever he could; he didn't want to be packed into the elevator like a sardine waiting for kids to get off on two different floors before he was free to leave.

And he was in luck, because the room he was lead to was right next to the door to one set of stairs which would make that plan even easier. The secretary knocked on the door once then walked away as soon as it started to open without even taking the time to introduce Raz.

The guy who opened the door was a tall thin stick-insect of a person. He tilted his head and looked down at Raz. "You the new kid?" he asked, and he didn't sound annoyed about his being there but he didn't sound especially welcoming either.

"Yeah," Raz said, and glanced off down the hall where the secretary was just vanishing back into the elevator. "Man, what a jerk that jerk was."

The guy barked a quick laugh. "No kidding. When people screw up enough to get sent to the principle they freak out more about sitting in front of him until Morten's ready for them than about their punishment. I'm Gary." He stuck out his hand and Raz shook it.

"Raz."

"Better come in then." He stepped out of the way and let Raz inside. He stepped into a room that look like it had been mirrored, each side having the exact same bed and nightstand, desk, bookshelf and dresser, their positions just reversed from one side to the other. But one half was entirely bare aside from the furniture, while the other had band posters tacked up the walls, books on the shelf, and three guitar cases propped up at the end of the bed.

"Hey," Raz said as he dropped his bag on the side of the room that was obviously his, "sorry you need to start sharing all of a sudden. I tried getting out of it, but--"

"Nah," Gary cut him off. "Don't matter. You like music?"

"Doesn't everybody?" Raz asked, figuring it would be the right answer with a glance at the guitar cases.

"Then it's cool. I like practicing better with an audience anyway. And I got classes off for the day so I could move the crap I had on your side." He nudged Raz's bag with his foot, nodding towards his dresser. "Better get unpacked. Room check's tonight."

"Room check?" Raz asked. That was something Principle Morten hadn't mentioned.

"Happens once a week. It isn't too bad, the student disciplinary committee just comes through, makes you open your drawers and closet for them, takes a look under the beds. People just burn through anything they could get in trouble for before the weekly check comes, if you catch my drift. Or find somewhere better to hide it; they don't look too hard. But you get a demerit if your side's a mess, and not being unpack counts as mess. Five demerits is a detention."

Suddenly having a roommate didn't seem so bad. He hadn't known _any_ of that, and, okay, it was seriously unlikely that he would have discovered anything about the school that he needed to hide away where it wouldn't be found during a room check before that night, but having people unexpectedly demand that he let them into his room and go through his drawers when he was on an undercover mission would have made him feel super paranoid.

"Man, apparently Principle Morten didn't think it was important to tell me _anything_ about how things work in the dorms," he said as he started unpacking the few things he had. "I haven't heard any of this. Anything else I need to know?"

"Not much," Gary said, shrugging. "Lights out at ten, but they stop checking after an hour if you can't get to sleep. Showers are communal, ours is at the end of the hall, but we get our own toilet and sink to share with the room next door. Girls are allowed in our rooms and we can go down to theirs until five but the door's gotta stay open, and nobody cares who's in any of the common rooms as long as they're empty before lights out. Think that's all." Suddenly he snatched up Raz's school schedule from where he'd left it on his desk.

"What do you think you're doing?" Raz protested.

"Relax. Let's see who you've got." He ran his fingers down the list, and seemed to come up with a few worth talking about. "Mr. Marsh's pretty cool for history. He'll pass pretty much _anything_ as long as you can explain why you think you're right. Miss Smith's... eh, she's a gym teacher. They're all pretty much the same, right? Lucky break getting Mr. Kilpatrick for literature; he's the teacher in charge of our floor this year, and everybody knows he goes easy on 'his' boys. And... huh." He tapped German on the schedule and frowned. "I don't take German so this is just rumors, but I've heard some of the guys complain the teacher's a cold dick."

"Hey!" Raz exclaimed before he had a chance to catch himself. When Gary blinked at him in surprise he remembered that, oh yeah, the teacher was supposed to be a stranger who he shouldn't care about one way or another. He _really_ needed to get better about that; so far it seemed like knowing Sasha was the thing most likely to make him slip up. He quickly tried to make up for it by adding, "He can't be _that_ bad. I mean, he's the one who came and picked me up at the train station, and he seemed pretty okay. He didn't say a lot, but I didn't think he sucked _nearly_ as much as the creep who brought me up here."

Gary still looked doubtful, but he seemed willing to drop the subject. "Whatever, man. You've got your first class with him tomorrow, you can find out who's right about him then." Then he glanced at the clock and grinned. "Now, you feel like breaking a few rules your first day here? We got _more_ than enough time to walk into town and back before the school day ends. If you want I can introduce you to the best pizza around, my treat since you're the reason I don't have to be in class."

Raz knew that if he had free time he really _should_ wander around the school, getting to know where everything was as the first step in his investigation. But he also knew that Gary might think up a few more things that he'd need to know if he wanted to avoid getting in trouble and drawing unwanted attention because of it.

Plus he hadn't had anything to eat but train food since the day before, and pizza sounded great.

He sat his goggles on his bedside table, the last bit of unpacking he needed to do, and tossed his bag in the closet. "Lead the way."


	7. School Days

Raz's first day of school--his first _real_ day of school, he didn't think that sneaking off for pizza and then getting introduced around to other students really counted--wasn't really what pop culture had lead him to expect. Not that he hadn't realized it would be, he was totally past the age when he thought that TV or comics were an accurate picture of real life.

But it still would have been nice to find out that he was a little more prepared for the days, or weeks, or however long it ended up being to come that he'd expected.

It wasn't like he wasn't used to heading into missions where he had very little clue what he was in for. Usually because he was too excited to get out to them to pay enough attention to the briefings. But he'd reached a point where that didn't matter, where even if his brain had been elsewhere when Ford was going over what he needed to do to take down the threat of the day he'd seen enough killer robots and mad scientist's twisted experiments to work it out himself.

This was a totally different type of being unprepared.

But as the day wore on he started to relax and realize that it really wasn't hard to blend in, as much as it was possible for a new guy in the middle of the year to do so. The other students might as well have been kids from the town he'd just left the circus in, or especially stable Whispering Rock campers. They paid him more attention than they probably would have in the fall, but mostly they just had their own things they wanted to do and if he wasn't interested it didn't take them long to write him off.

In the process of meeting people another benefit to having a roommate made itself clear. Gary was apparently well-liked in his grade, and since he'd decided that Raz was okay most of the other senior boys seemed willing to give the lone junior living among them the benefit of the doubt. It eased things along with people in his own grade as well; even if they had nothing else in common with him it seemed like everyone at least wanted to have a conversation about what living on the top floor was like. From some of the weird questions he got about what his room was like Raz got the feeling that underclassmen weren't often invited up... and that a lot of his classmates were going to be disappointed next year when they got their new room and found a normal dull space.

Which he figured might explain _why_ the seniors kept younger students out of their rooms. _They'd_ had feel that disappointment, so they'd make sure the kids coming after them would too.

His classes, for the most part, were just as easy to settle into. Some of the teachers made him introduce himself to the class, others just made sure he had the right book for the class then waved him to a seat. The most embarrassing of them was Mrs. Wright, his biology teacher; she had already heard that he was from the circus, and as soon as he came in she seemed to forget any lesson plan she might have had for the day in favor of excitedly pressing him for information about what it was like.

Raz got more and more tired of being the center of her attention as the minutes ticked away, but he put up with it. The other students in the class seemed happy to have the extra time to sit around chatting while their teacher apparently tried to vicariously live out a childhood dream of running away to join the circus through him. Annoying them by insisting the teacher get on with their lessons already wouldn't be the best way to start getting them willing to open up to him for the investigation.

When he was actually able to get his lessons instead of being treated like a show and tell project he found that Milla had pretty much been right about his classes being at his level. For the most part he was able to come up with the right answers if he was called on to answer a question. When he was forced to take an algebra quiz with the rest of his math class--the teacher promising before class started that he'd just use it to judge what Raz knew and wouldn't weigh it as heavily in his final grade as he would with the other students--there was only one problem where he absolutely did _not_ know the process for working out the answer, though there were a few others he was a shaky on. He'd never read the book they were covering in Literature but had at least seen the movie based on it so he could kind of follow the discussion. Still, he made a mental note that _Arsenic and Old Lace_ would be the first of his school books he'd pick up that night because it was the class he'd least be able to fake his way through with things he already knew.

There was a weird disconnect at times between what he'd just been learning a couple of days before at home and what he was suddenly supposed to be studying. His school in a box had decided it was time for him to get more in-depth information on the War of 1812 than he had when it covered it in elementary school, but now he found himself getting lectured about the Korean War instead. That was one the hardest classes to get through, since his lessons had never touched on much past World War 2 before. Raz always hated feeling like he was behind in anything, but he told himself that would just make it all the sweeter when he learned until his brain went numb and left all the other students in the dust come finals.

So he was feeling pretty good about how his new school life would be going by the end of the day, when he finally reached his first German lesson. That did not last long.

Sasha greeted him with a stream of German that he didn't understand more than two words of. Judging by the way the rest of the day had gone, and since he wasn't pointing at a desk, Raz assumed that he was telling him to introduce himself to the rest of the class. "Uh... Ich bin ein Razputin?" he tried, not even sure if that was right but it was all he could manage. The people who'd put together his German book had seemed to think anyone in an AP class must already be past the stage where they needed how to introduce themselves, because none of the cramming he'd done from it was any help.

He rearranged his priorities for that night; he'd head down to the computer lab and find a website that could teach him some _basic_ German before he cracked the play.

Everyone kept staring at him like they expected him to say _anything_ else for another minute before Sasha finally frowned tightly and pointed to a seat with another burst of German, his tone sharp. Raz scrambled for it with his head bowed, looking for all the world like a contrite student, but as he did he shot Sasha the thought, ' _Hey, don't forget you've only got yourself to blame for my crappy language skills. You've had six years to teach me if you_ really _wanted._ '

When he glanced up at Sasha again he saw the skin around the corners of his eyes tighten the tiniest bit, too slight for anyone else outside of Whispering Rock to ever pick up on it, like they'd be curving with a smile if he allowed himself to. ' _I will keep that in mind if I ever run out of more pertinent lessons for you,_ ' Sasha's own thoughts drifted back, much softer than Raz's own had been. He took that as an unspoken lesson itself; he hadn't thought of it before, but in a school full of psychics he should probably try to keep his thoughts down. Weak and untrained though the other students were, if somebody's natural knack was towards telepathy there was the tiniest chance they might be able to pick up a loud thought drifting past them clearly enough to make it out.

Weirdly, he knew that there was more a risk of that than of any fully trained psychic who might be behind the school overhearing them. Any psychic with strong enough telepathy to realize that's what it was, instead of thinking they were having indistinct thoughts or hearing imaginary voices, learned how to keep other people's thoughts out _fast_ and kept them out. Otherwise their life would just be one long string of learning things they _did not want_ to know about the people around them. Even momentarily letting in a single person's thoughts could be enough to change things forever; a prime example of that was standing right in front of Raz going undercover as a teacher in the central US when he would have spent his life cobbling shoes in Germany if not for a single ill-timed thought.

Nope, nobody would be deliberately picking up on any thoughts they sent drifting between each other, not unless they did something to make them suspicious. And that wouldn't be happening, because they were awesome secret agents! Nobody would realize they were anything other than exactly what they were pretending to be until the day they found out what sinister plot was behind the school and brought it crashing down.

Or until they found out for sure that there wasn't anything sinister happening at all. But how boring would _that_ be? Raz tried not to think too much about that possibility.

The rest of his German class went on much the same way the first couple of minutes had. Sasha didn't call on him to answer _every_ question, but he did often enough to make it obvious to everyone in the class that Raz absolutely didn't belong there. Which he knew was necessary, but how embarrassing was that?

At least it made him feel super accomplished the one time the question was something he recognized from his studying and he was able to respond more-or-less correctly. Especially when he saw the flash of surprised pleasure in Sasha's eyes even as he briefly switched to English to lecture him about how atrocious his accent was.

Nobody could have been surprised when Sasha demanded he stay after class, though he got a few sympathetic looks from the other students as they filled out of the class. As soon as the last one had left Sasha shut the door behind them. There was a poster plaster on it, Raz noticed, neatly covering the window in it so nobody would be able to look in on them.

"How did you like your first day at school, Razputin?" he asked, sitting down at his desk and opening up a folder that seemed to be full of tests. Raz grinned at the look Sasha gave the first one, knowing how much he disliked dealing with paperwork of any kind. It was why he just shoved any he had into boxes where he didn't need to look at it, then let Raz run around destroying them all at the start of every summer.

"It was okay," Raz said, perching on a filing cabinet beside him. "I haven't gotten any top secret spy-ey information yet, just, you know, normal schooly info, but I've been trying to be friendly enough so people might wanna open up to me."

"Ah, good. Even if it doesn't feel like much, that isn't a bad place to start. As to finding anything out, you'll need to have patience Razputin. You can't solve all your cases in a day."

"No kidding. So far the closest thing I have to intel is that the principle's freaked out about losing her star gymnast. She kept pushing me to join the team even when I tried to say no!"

Sasha looked thoughtful for a moment, then glanced up at him. "It's your own choice, of course, but if I were you I would consider joining."

"But, investigation!" Raz protested, stung. Did Sasha think he wouldn't be a good enough help or something, to say he should waste time flipping around on a balance beam when he should cozying up to any weak psychics he could find and poking around in the out-of-the-way corners of the school?

"Exactly," Sasha said, not even seeming to notice his tone, "and part of that investigation involves integrating yourself with the school. Joining a club would be a good chance to do so. And if Principal Morten is as invested in the gymnastics club as you say she may even be lenient if you're ever caught somewhere you aren't meant to be."

" _Not_ gonna happen," Raz told him confidently. With six years of practice under his belt he could stay invisible almost as long as Milka, so if there was one thing he _wasn't_ worried about going into his first deep undercover mission it was staying hidden when he needed to. He'd never get why Sasha and Milla never tried to practice getting better at it; even if they hadn't trained in it back when they were young enough to really get good at a psychic power they weren't naturally inclined towards, just being able to hold it a few extra seconds could be enough to save a mission one day. Then he scratched the back of his head and laughed, "Well, at least my dad'll be glad to find out I'm still practicing my acrobatics here."

"And if you will look on the bright side, Razputin, at least your role should be more entertaining to you than mine." Sasha gave a pained look to a paper he'd already covered in red ink before flipping it to the other side. "This boy claims that he has had a German tutor since he was in primary school. _Terrible._ "

Raz grinned at him, "I don't think that's the type of thing you're supposed to share with other students, Sasha."

"I didn't intend to," he replied, making Raz's grin stretch wider at the round-about acknowledgement that he wasn't just there to play school kid. It had been dumb of him to doubt it even for a second. "I'll see you tomorrow, Razputin. And don't worry if you don't find out anything right away; these things take time."

"Yeah, I know. Ford and the others made totally sure I knew I could be in this for the long haul." He pushed himself off the filing cabinet and hopped to the ground, but before walking to the door he stopped and said over his shoulder, "Still, I'll try to surprise you with how fast I work things out!"

"I'll hope that you do," Sasha told him, his voice dropping back to his cold teacher tone as the door opened, but Raz knew that he totally meant it.

When he stepped out into the hall he was surprised to see a girl who'd been in class with him sitting on the floor across from the door, leaning against her backpack. When she saw him she hopped to her feet, and fell right into step with him as he started walking away making it obvious that she really _had_ been waiting for him. Before he could ask what she wanted, she burst out in a scandalized voice, "Okay, sorry for being so blunt with this, but _how the hell_ did you get into that class?"

"Uh..." Raz said, blinking at her.

"I mean, I'm not, like, gonna turn you into the testing committee for getting into an AP class you have no business being in or anything, but it was _so_ obvious that there was no way you should have been able to pass the tests to make it in and I just needed to know. How?"

It took him a second longer to pull himself out of her stream of words and answer, but luckily back at Whispering Rock they'd already planned out a lie for this just in case. "Well, if you _promise_ you're not gonna tell... I cheated."

"Well, duh," she said, rolling her eyes at him so far back that it seemed like it would have to hurt. "That wasn't the question. How did you do it?"

"I didn't actually plan to get in," he told her, more or less honestly. It definitely wasn't a class he'd have picked for himself anyway. "It's just, my Grandma's from Germany, okay? And she always wanted me and all my brothers and sisters and cousins to learn the language, but I was never really interested in it so I just pretended to go along with it and memorized a few phrases to make her think I was learning. Then when she saw the class listings here she was all 'Oh, Razputin, you finally have a chance to put our language to good use!' and I didn't want to disappoint her, you know. So I... _kinda_ sent my brother to take the tests for me."

"That _worked?_ " she asked, staring at him with wide eyes.

"Well, I was home schooled so no teachers had ever seen me before, right? And he looks enough like me that nobody would take a second look at my ID." Raz sighed, trying to look put out, "I just thought he'd get a good enough score to make Grandma happy. I didn't think he'd be good enough to actually get me _in_. And once his scores came back I couldn't get out of it. So I'm just gonna spend a semester looking like an idiot in that class."

"Wow, that's gonna _suck_ for you, new kid," she said. "In case you didn't notice, our teacher's kind of a jerk. I don't think he's gonna like having someone who doesn't know what he's doing in there!"

"I don't think he's that bad," Raz told her, quietly thinking that it was just getting more and more obvious why Sasha needed someone to help investigate the students. Then, in a burst of inspiration he added, "In fact, he offered to help tutor me a little when he had time, since _he_ thought it was obvious I needed it too!" A neat explanation for them spending a lot of time together. He'd just need to make sure to tell Sasha.

But the girl looked doubtful. "Getting stuck alone with the ice king? Yeah, I think that's gonna suck even _worse_ for you, new kid." She stopped in the middle of the hall and held out her hand for him to shake. "Well, if you ever want to study with somebody less scary, I'm Janey. Janey Pierce."

"Razputin Aquato," he said, accepting her handshake. "But you can call me Raz. Maybe I'll take you up on that someday."

Who knew, maybe he was looking at his chance to make German class a little less embarrassing.


	8. Nose To the Grindstone

Over the next few days he started getting used to life at the school. Time began settling into a fairly steady routine; classes, getting German drilled into his head by Janey, studying for his other classes for the last hour or so before lights out, and spending the time in-between everything else either wandering the school looking for clues about what might be happening or chatting with other students in the hope that one day they might unknowingly drop a useful piece of information. But he hadn't gotten anything yet, hadn't even successfully identified another psychic though every so often he caught a feeling like a buzz of energy against his skull that told him one was somewhere close. As long as they weren't actually _doing_ anything with their powers he couldn't pick up exactly who the sensation was coming from. Even if he took the risk of searching for them with his own mind, potentially leaving a mental trail back to himself even with the buckle hiding his powers if someone strong enough kept an eye out for it, it wouldn't do any good. He wouldn't pick up any stray thoughts from someone revealing that they were psychic if they were so weak that _they_ didn't know it.

The one thing that might prove valuable that he had picked up on was that every-so-often, during the same class period when he had algebra, he could feel a larger than usual group of them somewhere off in the distance. But he didn't have the time to hunt down where they were _and_ get to class on time, and if he was gonna be in the school for awhile he figured that pissing off the one teacher he had who was almost as bad as Sasha pretended to be by being tardy or skipping outright probably wouldn't be the best start to his time there. Even if nothing worse happened, detention would be a giant waste of what little time he had to work in.

And maybe part of the reason he was willing to hold off was that he didn't want to find out that the one lead he _might_ have was just a bunch of psychic kids coincidentally taking an art class at the same time or something. As long as it was obvious from the fact that they kept getting together day after day at the same strength that nothing was going on which seriously needed to be stopped ASAP, no new round of brain harvestings in a new location, it was good to know he'd possibly found a clue instead of just finding out that he'd been dumb not to write it off as something Sasha would have checked out long since.

But when something really finally shifted it happened on the one afternoon that he expected to be a near waste of time; the day he'd been given to audition for the gymnastics team. He only went at all because Sasha had told him he wanted him to, left to his own devices he would have made an excuse about needing more time just to settle into his new school schedule before he started looking at any clubs and went on his way. It wasn't like he even had any type of bodysuit, or whatever it was high school gymnasts usually wore, he had to show up in his gym clothes when he went.

They really must have been hurting for someone to take the empty slot on the team, because the audition turned out to be pathetically easy. Coach Bailey basically just pointed him at the school's equipment and told him to show them his stuff. It was like pointing a fish towards water and asking it to prove how well it could swim. Only even better, since metaphorical fish Raz would be in a lot of trouble with the family curse dogging his flippers and all. The equipment they used for the circus might have been different than what was used by gymnasts, but it wasn't as though it were hard for him to jump up onto the balance beam and pretend that it was the world's widest tight rope or throw himself between the parallel bars imagining they were the trapeze. He'd performed using stranger equipment before, both in the real world and within people's minds. Making the adjustment was a snap.

When he was done some of the members of the team were looking at him with respect. Others just seemed bored, waiting for their chance to get to work.

One looked outright hostile.

"Fine, so he's got a few fancy moves," the boy said, his narrowed eyes fixed on Raz, "but he's no match for Rachel. He's all flash and no form."

"Don't take Tim's dickishness personally," a girl on the team who he vaguely recognized from gym, Mindi or something like that, whispered out of the side of her mouth as Raz wandered back over to the group. "Rach is his sister, and that family had a _lot_ of plans wrapped up around their kids getting, like, scouted for the Olympics or something that got all messed up when she broke her leg. It kinda screwed them up, you know?"

Before anyone else could chip in with their views of Tim's dickishness level and the reasons behind it the guy himself was storming out to take Raz's place on the floor, glaring back over his shoulder at him as he went. "Watch and learn, newbie. This is what a _real_ gymnast looks like, not someone who's just performing for the crowd at the big top."

"You should kind of take it as a compliment; if you weren't good enough to take his sister's spot he wouldn't be acting like such a jerk," the girl went on comfortingly. But Raz was barely paying attention. He was watching. And learning.

And feeling a horrible pity instead of awed, or impressed, or cowed, or whatever it was Tim was hoping for. Because the first time he flipped himself through the air Raz realized that he'd identified his first psychic, and that meant that whatever dreams Tim and his family had about Olympic gold would never come true. Even just a professional career in the sport would be beyond his grasp.

His powers were just as weak as Ford had told Raz the psychics at the school would be; if he hadn't been right there in the room watching him Raz would never even have picked up on the slight boost of levitation the guy was using, pushing his body a little higher, making his landings a little lighter. He doubted that Tim was even aware of his powers to be doing it consciously. In fact, he was _sure_ he wasn't, or he wouldn't be wrapping himself up so tightly in his identity as a gymnast.

The thing was, nobody was gonna test that deeply for psychics when it came to a high school sports team. If somebody's skills stood out enough to be suspicious scans would be done, but nobody would ever bother for someone like Tim, whose powers just pushed him into a level of 'very good' that was still believable for a mundane person. It was more-or-less assumed that if a kid were gonna use psychic powers to cheat they wouldn't be able to resist pushing it further than that, seeing how much they could get away with. But when it came to turning a sport into a _profession_ the scans became impossible to avoid, and any psychics discovered would only be allowed to compete against other psychics.

And a mundane level of very good placed Tim's talents light years behind anyone who competed at a psychic level. Put his sister there too, if she owed her talent to the same source. Whatever dreams the guy was building his vision of the future on, in a year or two he'd find out that they'd never even had a chance at coming true.

And Raz couldn't even warn the poor jerk. Not without breaking his cover. Normal student Razputin wouldn't be able to sense the psychic potential of a pineapple.

He didn't know if learning about Tim, and potentially his sister, would actually do him any good. He doubted that whatever was going on in the school included sinister plans to break a girl's leg and leave Principle Morten depressed about her pet team's chances. But at least it was _something_ , gave him somebody to keep an eye on as he tried figuring things out instead of working completely blind.

It was just too bad that it was someone who was already making it obvious that he wasn't about to let Raz buddy up to him for the sake of the investigation.


End file.
